Michael Lesniak

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(It seems I'm going to be a RecentChangesJunkie - to much time to read [:-)] -- and, as this is not enough, I'm also becoming a RandomPageJunkie)

              http://www.mlesniak.de/enjoy.jpg

I'm a computer science student (esp. theoretical computer science and mathematics) currently studying in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany. My KGS username is mic. My rank is about 15k at the moment.


Old problems

Hmm, at the moment I'm going to lose nearly all my games. It seems I'm forgeting things I've learned, playing w/o strategy and thinking (reads extremly, but that's the view I have -- lost approx. two or three stones...). Does anyone also have/had this problem? How did you deal with this?

Bill: Skill at go is a composite of several skills. That means that a rating, even a rank, is something of a fiction. Your opponents may just be finding your weak spots, more or less by accident. An apparent fluctuation of 2 or 3 stones at your level is not really unusual, and nothing to worry about. :-)

MichaelLesniak: Hmm, that sounds reasonable -- think I have to look at my games again to find some common mistakes.

That having been said, since you want to advance, study, study, study. Study at home, play for fun. At your skill level, don't worry about winning or losing. Play what you think is the best move, or the most interesting move.

MichaelLesniak: Hopefully, everyone does this ;-) Thanks for the Tips


Target

My target was to become 10kyu in October or November. Well, since I had to make a pause of about 1 1/2 month (university stuff is more important *g*...) I guess it's going to be very hard to reach...

To reach it I'm trying to solve Tsumego (esp. graded Go problems) and play many games. Sometimes the FearOfLosing occurs, but that's the game: Someone wins, someone loses...and my personal psychological hint (which works quite good): Depending on my time I set a number of games I want to loose and play at least so many games till I reach this number. So I'm not too sad, if I loose but think, "Hey, going to reach my losing-games target for this day..."


Some comments about my target:

Basti: Absolutely reachable, depending on how hard you try.

MichaelLesniak: Well, I try to play at least 2 - 3 games each day. I'm reading Go proverbs and hopefully this helps a bit... I've go some other books ("Fundamentals in the lessons of Go", "Basic techniques", ...), but did not want to work with them till I'm a little bit better.

Basti: Again me ^^. Why not some Tsumego too? I think problems really help a lot in the beginning and if you keep up the work in 6 months you may find yourself much stronger than exspected.

MichaelLesniak: Sounds like a good idea. Do you know about any books suited for beginners near my rank?

JohnAspinall: Graded Go Problems for Beginners Try the middle two volumes (2 and 3).

MichaelLesniak: Reading Vol 2, which I a little bit too easy for me but neverless quite interesting. Ordering Vol 3 soon :) Thanks for the advance

Basti: Never read a book about that but try goproblems.com or take a look at the book-section of sensei's.

Alex Weldon: From 19k to about 5k I was improving at an average rate of two stones a month (around 5k is where most people hit the first serious plateau). I wasn't reading any books, but I was reading stuff on SL every day, and playing probably 3-4 games a day. Sounds like you're doing a comparable amount of work, so 10k (hell, aim for 9k... single digits!) in 6 months should be easy. During times of rapid improvement like this, I'd recommend playing on IGS, though, or if you want to play on KGS, create a new account every couple months. KGS ratings acquire too much inertia, and if you're improving rapidly, you *really* want your rank to keep up... nothing will slow you down more than always playing people who are actually a couple stones weaker than you because your rank isn't accurate.

Andy Pierce: Always look at the entire board before you put each and every stone down on it. This is immediately worth 3 or 4 more stones of strength once you get to 12k or so.


My rating

Rank


Misc. Stuff

My current background-picture made with gimp is here: [ext] http://www.mlesniak.de/fire.jpg


This is a copy of the living page "Michael Lesniak" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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